Welcome to Part Three of our Web Traffic Blueprint article series, where we show you how to drive traffic automatically to your website using WordPress.
In Part One of this article series, we explained why using an expertly configured WordPress site is the key to generating automated web traffic …
(With an expertly configured WordPress website, all you have to do is add fresh content consistently to attract new traffic!)
In Part 2, we looked at the setup phase. We explained the best way to get started if you don’t have a web presence yet, how to set things up if you already have a site, and what to do if your site has been built with WordPress.
(In Part two we show you how to set up WordPress on your domain)
In this section, we will discuss the configuration phase of the traffic blueprint. You will learn why an expertly configured site is different from a professionally configured website, and how much work is required to make sure that when all is fully configured, web traffic will automatically start flowing when you begin to publish new content on a regular basis to your site.
WordPress Traffic Automation System – Configuration Phase
Finding ways to drive more traffic to one’s website is often cited by many website owners as one of their greatest challenges online. Also, the business landscape is becoming increasingly more competitive worldwide and businesses are exploring any and every advantage they can that can help you increase their competitiveness online.
The ability to automatically generate traffic on demand can be a huge advantage. With an expertly configured WordPress site, you have an immediate competitive advantage from the very start.
The Configuration Phase Is The Difference
There is a difference between an expertly configured WordPress site and a website that has been professionally installed and set up by a web-building expert but not necessarily configured to its fullest advantage.
Here is a simple way to understand the key difference:
With a WordPress website that has been expertly configured you get a web presence plus an automated online business marketing process!
(An expertly configured website gives you a professional web presence with a built-in automated online business marketing system!)
Not only does it take additional labor to build and integrate an automated online business marketing system into your website, it also takes a special type of expert knowledge.
Let’s illustrate this with a joke.
A Semi-True Story …
All was going according to schedule in the widget-making plant when all of a sudden, everything ceased working.
As no one could figure out what was wrong, the floor manager decided to call in an expert to try and fix the problem.
Promptly after arriving, the expert immediately went to the main control box. After staring at the schematics for about 2 minutes, the expert then produced a little hammer from his tool belt and made a very gentle tap about 2 inches from the bottom-right side of the box.
Immediately, everything sprang to life once more.
The floor manager was delighted as he thanked the expert, who left as quickly as he had arrived.
A couple of days later, the manager received an invoice for the amount of $5,000.
The manager dialed the expert, demanding to know why they were being charged such a ludicrous fee for so little time spent delivering a minimal amount of work and promptly requested an itemized invoice before hanging up.
The next day, an invoice statement arrived on the manager’s desk. Upon opening it, this is what he saw:
The #1 challenge most businesses face online is being able to drive new visitors to their sites.
In the story we’ve just described, how much money did the gizmo plant stand to lose when production stopped working and no one in the factory floor was able to fix it? Did the expert in our story not have every right to ask to be compensated fairly for spending years building up the knowledge, skills and expertise that enabled him to assess and avert a very serious crisis?
Similarly, if you could have a WP website fully set up so all you had to do is publish content to it and Google, Facebook, Twitter, LinkedIn, YouTube and dozens of other web properties would be automatically notified, how much time and money would this save you?
(How much better would your business be if you could automate the process of attracting new visitors to your website?)
Although many experts often make complicated solutions look simple, it rarely is that simple or easy.
Expertly configuring a WordPress site requires more than adding some pages with content and configuring a few settings. It also involves knowing where to tap! This includes knowing things like:
- Which programs you need to install to get various functionalities on your site.
- Which third-party accounts need to be set up to achieve desired outcomes
- Which options you need to configure to ensure that everything functions as expected, etc.
(Generating web traffic automatically with WordPress is a process that requires knowledge and expertise)
This stage of the traffic automation system is not technically challenging, but it’s quite involved. The reason why is because it’s not as easy as installing a plugin, clicking a couple of buttons … it’s all of this and so much more.
Expertly configuring your website is a complex process that involves your web hosting server, your website, and a number of third-party sites and services …
(The configuration stage involves more than just configuring some WordPress settings)
If we were to create a simple flowchart of all the steps involved in the configuration process, it would look like this …
(A simplified diagram showing the activities involved in the configuration process)
Let’s examine these areas in more detail.
Web Server Configuration
We’re not talking about the process of configuring your web hosting account for site installation purposes. What we are talking about, is tweaking settings and options in your server specifically for handling web traffic …
(In the configuration phase, your web server settings need to be checked for handling both good and bad traffic)
Not all traffic is welcome traffic. Some of the traffic you will attract will be unwanted traffic like bot spam, security threats, brute-force bot attacks, etc.
This part of the configuration process, therefore, requires planning for good and bad traffic and adjusting settings in your server accordingly. This includes things like implementing spam protection and securing server files, to configuring domain and email forwarding, setting up htaccess file redirections, etc …
(Have you configured your control panel settings for handling things like emails, page errors, etc?)
After your server settings have been checked and configured (if required), the next step is to configure a number of external sites and/or online services.
External Web Properties And Accounts – Configuration
The concept behind choosing external sites is that all content should be posted to a central location (your site) and from there, get automatically distributed to other components of your web traffic generation system, or notify traffic-related web properties and services.
Once these external services have been added to your network, content pointing back to your website is automatically published on these platforms. Your content and website will be exposed to new audiences and new sources of traffic.
Some of these third-party sites will need to have accounts set up before configuring your WordPress site’s settings to help save time and some will need to be done later, during the automation phase.
For example, here are just some of the accounts you will need to have set up before configuring your site’s settings:
Google Webmaster Tools
(Google Webmaster Tools)
Google Webmasters lets you inform Google about your site’s pages, submit XML sitemaps for faster page indexing, and provides site owners with useful information, tools, and reports about their website.
After setting up your account and entering site data with Google Webmasters, this information can be used to automate web traffic settings and notifications in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
Google Analytics
(Google Analytics)
Google Analytics lets you improve your website’s traffic performance, SEO, marketing efforts, and more, by tracking all user behavior, pages visited, keywords searched for, organic referrals, etc.
After setting up your Once you have set up Google Analytics, traffic monitoring data can be easily integrated with WordPress using any of several Google Analytics plugins used with other applications.
Bing Data And Tools
(Drive more traffic with Bing Webmaster Tools)
Bing Webmaster Tools is similar to Google Webmasters. Once your Bing Webmaster Tools account and site details are set up, the information can be used with web traffic settings in WordPress (e.g. using plugins like Yoast SEO) and other applications.
WordPress.com
(WordPress.com)
As discussed in Part 2, WordPress offers both a self-hosted and a hosted option. We recommended choosing the self-hosted WordPress platform if you are planning to grow a professional online presence.
WordPress.com (the hosted option), however, provides a number of useful features, which various WordPress plugins can access. We recommend setting up an account at WordPress.com, therefore, and we’ll show you how to integrate these features into your automated web traffic system in Part 4 of this series.
Social Media Pages
(Syndicate your content automatically to your social media accounts and bring new visitors to your site)
You will need your various social accounts set up before you can configure these as part of your traffic generation system.
Once you have set up and configured everything, you will be able to syndicate your content automatically to your social media sites and social bookmarking accounts and attract new traffic to your site.
Make sure you have profiles set up with all the well-known social networks – Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, LinkedIn, YouTube, etc.
There are lots of social sites you can set up accounts with. You don’t need to go crazy, just select the ones that will work well with your system and/or content sharing tools (we cover some of these tools in more detail when we discuss the Automation phase).
(There are loads of social bookmarking sites you can post your content to. Image: ShareThis.com)
Additional Platforms, RSS Aggregators, Etc.
There are many emerging web platforms and RSS aggregators that can serve as secondary-level sources of traffic. Some are free or provide free accounts, and some offer a range of pricing plans.
For example, here is a content aggregator that lets you add an RSS feed from your site …
RebelMouse
(RebelMouse – Publishing platform for distributed content)
RebelMouse is an aggregator for your RSS feeds and social profiles. Your content is displayed in a Pinterest-like format and visitors can follow your RebelMouse website.
There are various solutions you can add to your web traffic system. Please feel free to contact us if you need assistance exploring this area further, or to discuss a strategy to suit your needs.
After you have configured your web server and set up external service accounts, it’s time to configure WordPress.
WordPress Traffic Configuration
The first step in configuring your site for traffic is to make sure that your global settings have been set up correctly.
Let’s go over some key areas.
Global Settings – WordPress
The WordPress administration area contains a Settings section that allows you to configure your site’s main settings …
(WordPress settings section)
General Settings
Sections like Site Title and Tagline can affect your site’s SEO, search listings, etc …
(WordPress Settings – General Settings)
Writing
The Writing Settings section contains one of the most important and often overlooked built-in traffic notification systems available to WordPress users …
(Settings Menu – Writing Settings Section)
As stated in this section,
When you publish a new post, WordPress automatically notifies the following site update services …
Unless you or your webmaster have specifically chosen to prevent search engines from indexing your site, then your site will automatically ping the list of services entered into the Update Services text area
By default, only one service is listed …
(Update Services – A Powerful Traffic Feature Of WordPress)
WordPress lets you notify dozens of update services automatically – just add a list of update services to this section and WordPress takes care of the rest …
(You can notify dozens of update services automatically with WordPress!)
Download A Comprehensive List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site!
Click the link below to download a comprehensive list of reliable and authoritative ping services for your WordPress site or blog:
Download A List Of Ping Services For Your WordPress Site
***
Note: If you need help setting up the list of ping services on your site, we recommend using a professional web services provider. You can find professional WordPress service providers in our WordPress Services Directory.
Reading Settings
This section affects how visitors will see your content when they visit your home page and blog pages.
The syndication settings in this section can have an influence traffic. For example, your choice of displaying the full content vs summaries of your post, affects how your content appears in RSS readers and RSS email campaigns, and could impact someone’s choice to explore your content further, and whether or not they will visit your website to read the rest of the content from a partial feed, or read the content in full without the need to click through to your site.
The most important setting in this section as far as your traffic system is concerned is whether the Search Engine Visibility checkbox is ticked or not.
Normally, you want search engines to visit your site. Leaving this box unchecked allows your site to instantly ping all the update services you have listed when a new post is published (see Writing Settings above). Unless you have a specific reason why search engines should not visit your site, do not check this box …
(WordPress Settings – Reading Settings Screen)
Discussion
Although the settings in this section are mostly concerned with how users engage with content on your site, you have the option to allow notifications to sites linked to from your posts, and to allow link notifications from other blogs (pingbacks and trackbacks). This can work for you, but it can also drive bad traffic in the form of SPAM comments …
(Global Settings – Discussion Settings Screen)
Permalink Settings
Permalinks allow you to create SEO-friendly URLs …
(Settings Menu – Permalink Settings Section)
Here are some of the options for configuring your permalinks …
(Configuring post permalinks)
To learn more about setting up permalinks, go here: Setting Up Your WordPress Permalinks
Configuring WordPress Plugin Settings For Traffic Generation
The WordPress developer community makes available thousands of plugins that can add just about every type of functionality to your site, including traffic generation.
Let’s look at some types of plugin categories that affect traffic and plugin examples
Security Plugins – Blog Defender
Once again, it’s important to configure your website for handling both good traffic and bad traffic. No matter what kind of business you run or plan to run online and how small you think your web presence is, website security is something you simply cannot afford to ignore.
(Security Plugins stop bad traffic from harming your web presence)
Security plugins like Blog Defender help to make your website invisible to hackers and botnets.
Go here to learn more:
WordPress SEO Plugins – Yoast SEO
SEO plugins help drive more traffic by making your web pages more indexable …
(WordPress SEO plugins help drive traffic by improving your website’s SEO)
A plugin like Yoast SEO can improve your SEO. Properly configured, the Yoast SEO plugin not only makes your web pages easier for search engines like Google and Bing to find, crawl and index, it allows you to specify how your content will show up in Google’s search results and social media sites Facebook, Twitter, and GooglePlus.
Social Plugins
Allowing visitors to easily share your content with others online can help drive significant traffic to your site, especially if you provide great content that adds real value to readers.
(You can add social sharing to your website easily using WordPress plugins)
WordPress users can easily add social sharing features to their site using free or inexpensive WordPress plugins.
Many social share plugins let you specify which sites your content can be shared to, embed social buttons into your content, set up default update notifications, display/hide share counters (e.g. number of shares), etc. Some plugins even allow you to ‘lock’ content or downloads which users can unlock by liking your page.
WP Traffic Features In Themes
As well as configuring various plugins, many WordPress themes also include features that help grow your traffic.
For example, as well as options and settings for configuring layout and design elements of your website, many themes also give you built-in features that let you improve search optimization and site navigation structure for better indexing, easily add analytics snippets, social sharing buttons, etc …
(Many themes allow you to configure settings and options for improved traffic results)
With many quality themes, adding social sharing buttons and features to your content is as easy as selecting the option to enable this functions …
(Many WordPress themes provide users with built-in social sharing features)
Additional Configuration Steps For Your WordPress Site
Last but not least in the web traffic configuration process, are the areas that need to be set up outside of the global settings.
This includes:
Legal Web Pages
Once again, when preparing your site for an increase in visitor numbers, it’s important to plan not only how to handle bad and good traffic but also for all the things that can go wrong as more and more people find and begin to visit your website.
If you engage in any form of business online (or are planning to), it’s important that your site is found to comply with regulatory agencies.
(Is Your Website Compliant?)
If you need help adding compliance pages to WordPress, go here:
Post Categories & Tags
WordPress post tags and categories help improve traffic by improving your site’s search optimization.
(Post categories help search engines index your pages, which helps to increase traffic.)
As we recommend in this article, your site’s post tags and post categories should be discussed and set up during the Website Planning Stage.
In the configuration phase, you will want to review and make sure that your site’s categories and tags have been set up correctly to deliver optimal benefits.
A Site Map Of Your Pages and Posts
A site map that displays all of your site’s posts and pages to visitors is not only a useful navigation tool, it can also help external sites discover your site’s content …
(Site Map – great for visitors and beneficial for traffic too!)
Note: An HTML site map and an XML sitemap are not the same thing. HTML site maps are web pages that provide readers with a visual map of how your content is structured, whereas XML sitemaps are mostly filled with code that only search engine bots can interpret. Although search engines like Google will index your pages just using an XML sitemap (which plugins like Yoast SEO will create for you – see earlier section), allowing visitors to find more pages on your site can result in increased traffic.
404 Error Page – An Additional Source Of Web Traffic!
When visitors searching online for your website type in the wrong URL or click on hyperlinks pointing to pages on your website that no longer exist, they are presented with an error page (known as a 404 page) …
(A WordPress 404 Error Page)
A 404 page can be turned into a useful source of traffic to your functional web pages …
(Configuring your 404 page allows you to redirect web traffic that may otherwise be lost.)
Although a 404 error page can be set up in your server, there are WordPress plugins that allow you to easily configure your 404 page inside your WordPress admin area.
WordPress Traffic Automation Blueprint: Configuration Phase – Summary
Once your website or blog has been expertly configured and fully set up, all you have to do then to automatically bring web traffic is publish content regularly.
The process of expertly configuring your WordPress site, however, can be quite involved , requiring the configuration and integration of different components and web properties …
(WordPress Traffic Blueprint – Configuration Checklist)
The kind of skills and expertise required to perform the configuration process typically takes some web professionals months to acquire.
Once you have expertly configured your WordPress site, the next step is to automate the process. This step is covered in the next article in the WordPress Traffic Blueprint series.
This is the end of Section 3
To continue reading, click on the link below:
This tutorial is part of an article series aimed at helping you learn how to grow your business and drive traffic sustainably with a WordPress-powered website or blog and proven web marketing methods.
Want To Get Notified When New Tutorials Get Published? Then Subscribe Using The Form Below!
***
"This is AMAZING! I had learnt about how to use WordPress previously, but this covers absolutely everything and more!! Incredible value! Thank you!" - Monique, Warrior Forum
***